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hi all,

im about to install clonezilla server on ubuntu server 22.04 or can i get away installing it on 24.04

also am i right in thinking clonezilla server is a DRBL server as after installing DRBL on the server i see no mention of installing clonezilla after on the server

from this page

do i enable DMA mode on the OS disk or my RAID disk where i want to put/save all the images i want to capture/deploy ie sda or sda1 or the RAID disk ie md1

i have only one NIC on this server, can i just get away with having one ip address or do i need an alias address aswell

this page

do i need to do this as already said my server has one NIC and i got a MS Domain controller to hand out DHCP leases and i just add option 66 67

one more thing does clonezilla server support “secure boot” when its enabled

thanks,
rob

5 Spice ups
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Yes
To use Clonezilla on a machine with Secure Boot enabled, you need to use the AMD64 (64-bit) version of the Ubuntu-based Clonezilla Live.

Haven’t you done this before - your profile lists Clonezilla as one of your skills.

Yes.

DMA should be enabled on both the boot drive and your data drive.

You can use a single NIC, but bear in mind it’s a single NIC.

2 Spice ups
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This would have been a good ask for your Llama install.

2 Spice ups
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yeah back in the day clonezilla on usb or with wds

is there anyway with clonezilla or do i need to use a tool before to shrink the partitions to only whats being used and to capture that instead of the whole disk, incase i come across a target disk bigger than source disk

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But may I know what the clonezilla server for ?

I would think easier just to use USB CD-ROM with a USB SSD (or HDD) ? Or even a NAS to store images if there is a LAN cable/port ?

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tbh now ive done that, i made a clonezilla live USB and i made a smb share and now i can save images to the smb share

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You’re likely to, this is why you deploy things, not clone them.

What would be the purpose of your setup?

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yes exactly @Rod-IT so what im doing is luckily this laptop has got a small m2 drive (only 256gb) and ive captured it via clonezilla so i can deploy this to larger drives but lets say i capture a new pc with a 2tb m2/ssd/hd and i come across i cant deploy it to a smaller drive

is there a way to shrink the partitions to only whats being used so make it as small as possible and to only clone the partitions NOT the drive?

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Shrink it before you clone it.

Or clone only used blocks not 1:1 copies.

If you plan to deploy to dissimilar size disks, Fog is a better choice.

2 Spice ups
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I have used clonezilla for two decades now but I was just using a CD or USB drive. An entire server seemed unnecessary. But with that said, I’m following this thread to see if it’s the new next thing I need to do.

1 Spice up
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on clonezilla can you only capture used blocks?

I was using fog but stopped as to get secure boot working for it out the box is a challenging lets just say but clonezilla live usb just works with secure boot out the box

this link is for advanced options

people say the good options are -r -icds -k1

1 Spice up
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I’m not sure who people are, but if you believe that is the option that works for you, try it.

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I agree.

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I just copy the entire thing and then go in using GParted and resize as needed. Works fine unless you are imaging onto a drive smaller than the original. But why would you do that?

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also what do you do about creating the image, what option you pick

savedisk or
saveparts

just read this so savedisk

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If this isn’t live, you’ll learn the answers and pros/cons by trying this yourself.

I’m not sure what your objective is here or why you would decrease someone’s drive, but I will wish you luck.

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A full disk backup is never going to be a single partition, so it is always savedisk. Only use savepart if you’ve gone out of your way to create another partition just for specific saves the you want without getting the entire drive.

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ok think i know what to do, will let you know if the below works

heres what it looked like when i clicked on clonezilla “restorepart” NOT “restoredisk”

image
image743×211 91.6 KB

as you can see p3 is the biggest so before i sysprep i will go in disk management and shrink this part as much as possible

then sysprep, “savedisk” using clonezilla and then “restorepart” to another pc and see if the size has come down

when you come to restoring it i saw the options -r (resize) -icds (skip checking dest disk before creating part table) -k1 (create part table proportionally)

thanks,
rob

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But I would think that most of us do not have the proper licenses or are cloning OEM machines like PCs or lappy…the last thing I would want to do if there is an audit is to have a cloning server with all the details and logs etc ?

I would think it really depends on the target machine ?
In most cases where there is c:\ & d:\ and you want to clone whole machine, I would just clone savedisk ? As in your pic, you may need the partitions (reserved, vfat & other hidden partitions).

I would use saveparts if there are c:\ & d:\ on target machine but you only want c:\ (along with the hidden partitions mentioned above).

The pic shows only the size of the partitions and not usage sizes.
So by right if to have a smaller image file, I would clean up

  • c:\windows\temp
  • c:\windows\software distribution
  • c:\windows\logs
  • user temp files at appdata\local\temp (within c:\users)
  • other downloaded installers that have been installed
  • run disk clean up to clear other temp files, windows update files etc ?

But this is mainly cloning so I would think to clone to very similar machines or even to the target itself (like a backup).

If the restoration is to other make & models, I would probably use Veeam agent for Windows to backup “entire computer” into a NAS (or large USB drive). Then create the Veeam bootable disk (VBD) as to boot up from the VBD and restore to other machines ?